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What is Capa’s Most Famous Quote Really About?
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”.
Robert Capa
For some time now, the theory saying that Gerda Taro was the main figure responsible behind the legendary photographer Robert Capa, has taken on considerable strength. One of the most-used criteria for determining the authorship of Capa’s scattered images is their format. If the photograph is 35mm, it was taken by Endre Friedman (Robert Capa); if the photograph is in 120 format, it is credited to Gerta Pohorylle (Gerda Taro). Reducing authorship to a mere categorization of formats is too vague, if you ask me. Here I won’t be talking about either of them, but instead about one of the photography world’s most famous quotations.
I’ve been repeating it almost like a mantra — and I must admit that, after a while, it became a bit pretentious. Since I’m being honest, I must also say that I never really understood what this statement meant. Many people have linked the famous quote to Capa’s opinion of telephoto lenses — he said that they were big liars. I have also matched Capa’s quote with one of my favorite scenes from the movie “The Bang Bang Club”, where Kevin Carter (played by Taylor Kitsch) tells Greg Marinovich (Ryan Phillippe) to “forget about the long lens bruh, this stuff only looks good up close”. But the real wisdom of the quote goes beyond gear usage. I have discovered it on the streets. The quote can be divided into four ways of “getting close” to what is being photographed — optically, physically, within the scene, and emotionally.
Optically close
This refers to lenses, especially to wide-angle lenses, that allow photographers to capture scenes in a peculiar way that prominently shows the context of a specific subject. The way a telephoto lens isolates a subject creates distance not only between the photographer and the subject; it also transmits this distance to the viewer.
Physically close
Wide-angle lenses push photographers out of their comfort zone by forcing them to walk and get close to the subjects to fill the frame to get a valuable and aesthetically pleasing composition. The great reward is images that feel genuinely intimate. If the same image is taken using a telephoto lens, it would appear to be…
